On Salaried Posts in Great Houses (21-22)

You must be content, how- “ever, for it would not even be possible for you to get away, now that you are in the paddock. So you take the bit with your eyes shut, and in the beginning you answer his touch readily, as he does not pull hard or spur sharply until you have imperceptibly grown quite used to him.

People on the outside envy you after that, seeing that you live within the pale and enter without let and have become a notable figure in the inner circle.

Slowly and gradually, therefore, as if you could then distinguish things for the first time in the indistinct light, you begin to realize that those golden hopes were nothing but gilded bubbles, while your labours are burdensome and genuine, inexorable and continuous. “What are they?” perhaps you will ask me: “J. do not see what there is in such posts that is laborious, nor can I imagine what those wearisome and insupportable things are that you spoke of.”[*] Listen, then, my worthy friend, and do not simply try to find out whether there is any weariness im the thing, but give its baseness and humility and general slavishness more than incidental consideration in the hearing.